As the use of computers in both the workforce and personal life has increased, so has the desire to allow for easier use of them. Many operating systems today utilize a windows based configuration of application programs. Information is displayed on a display screen in what appears to be several sheets of paper. By interfacing with the windows, a user can access any window as if grabbing a single sheet of paper. A windows based configuration allows a user to have two or more windows open on a display screen simultaneously.
Application windows are a user interface facility of all graphical user interface (GUI) systems. While application windows may vary in appearance across systems, they share many common attributes such as the ability to be resized and repositioned and to exist among other application windows associated with different applications. In many GUI systems, a representation exists for each of the open application windows in a predefined area, such as a taskbar. The representation is a reference guide that can be used by a user to quickly locate a particular application window and/or access a particular application window.
A user interaction scenario common to modern GUIs involves multiple simultaneous open application windows that share a common screen real estate. Support for multiple simultaneous open application windows is part of the appeal and power of a modern GUI, but this frequently results in application windows overlapping and obscuring each other making it difficult for the user to locate or navigate to a specific application window. This type of scenario and associated solutions are commonly referred to as window management problems and solutions.
Users typically associate an application window with a task, such as email, and can further create mental associations between multiple application windows and a single task or project. For example, in order to produce a slide show presentation, a user may require content from three or four different application windows, possibly from one or more applications, such as email, a graphics application, and a spreadsheet application. Multiple application windows may be visible on a screen and each application window may be associated with one or more tasks. A user must locate and navigate between these disparate application windows in order to access or exchange content to complete the task.
There is a common window management solution in many GUIs whereby an application window can be minimized and removed from view in the primary working screen space. A minimized application window is typically represented by a significantly smaller UI element. In Windows XP by Microsoft® Corporation of Redmond, Wash., minimized application windows are represented as application window tiles on a control bar, such as the taskbar control. In Mac OS X by Apple Computer, Inc. of Cupertino, Calif., minimized application windows are represented as miniature thumbnail buttons in the Dock. Minimizing application windows allows the user to remove unneeded application windows from the screen space, allowing them to focus on a smaller set of application windows. However, when attempting to retrieve an application window by accessing its representation from a taskbar region, needed representations often get buried in gloms when less important representations are visible to the user.